There are more things in heaven and earth

April 11, 2007

I get a health-related newsletter in my email daily, from the Health Science Institute. I don't know much about the institute, but the newsletters are great. You can search through old emails or sign up to receive them at this page.

Today's message read, in part:

Plants contain a secret defense system. When stressed by insects, plants produce higher levels of polyphenolic compounds, which are natural pesticides. And these compounds just happen to be potent antioxidants. But when chemical pesticides are used on crops, extra protection isn't needed, so fewer polyphenolics develop and antioxidant content is depleted.

It goes on to describe a study of organically grown vs. conventionally grown kiwis on a farm in southern California, concluding with:

Writing in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, the authors of the study offered this comment about nutritional value: "All the main mineral constituents were more concentrated in organic kiwifruits, which also had higher levels of ascorbic acid and total phenol content, resulting in a higher antioxidant activity."

Another study, published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry in 2003, confirmed that antioxidant levels were higher in blackberries, strawberries, and corn when they were grown organically.

Plants also produce salicylic acid in response to insect pests. Salicylic acid, apparently, helps to fight certain kinds of cancer and helps to reduce plaque in arteries. A British study from 2002 looked at 35 kinds of canned vegetable soup, some organic and some conventional:

They found that on average, the organic brands contained nearly six times as much salicylic acid, a natural anti-inflammatory agent. One of the organic soups contained nearly 50 times the concentration of salicylic acid as the typical non-organic soup.

If organic gardening is all about helping plants to protect themselves (e.g. by improving soil with compost), then in fact it's about increasing antioxidant and other nutrient value.

If I might rant for a moment, industrialized farming has stripped so much nutritive value out of our food that it's a wonder we're not all sick all the time. Our dairy is supposed to have omega-3's and conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, but it mostly doesn't. Our chicken eggs, beef, and lamb are supposed to have omega-3's and they largely don't. Our vegetables are supposed to have high mineral content, but lack of crop rotation and monoculture farming have stripped the minerals from the soil, and therefore from our veggies. Most fruits and vegetables are weeks old by the time they arrive at the supermarket, meaning their vitamin content is less, because vitamins break down over time. And now I find out that conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have only a fraction of the antioxidants, salicylic acid, and other nutrients than they had, say, 100 years ago.

As is obvious from my last post, I get some pretty dark visions of the future we Americans are facing in the next several years. But, long-term, I foresee some very positive societal changes. (Just so people know I'm not a complete curmudgeon.)

Many of the worst features of the "mass production" society, dreamt up by robber barons and utopian types, are fuelled by cheap energy. It's hard to run a 5,000-student high school "campus" unless it's cheap to bus the students, and cheap to heat that sprawling, single-story building. It's hard for Wal-Mart to run out local businesses unless it's dirt cheap to ship inventory from China. It's tough to import food from other continents or run enormous agribusiness farms unless fuel is plentiful, which means cheap oil becomes a subsidy to corporate farms. Processed foods and fast food are also particularly dependent on cheap fuel.

Consider the "energy ratio" of modern foods, meaning the energy used to get the food to the supermarket, compared to the energy we get out of it. (Both energy in and energy out can be measured in calories.) According to Resurgence magazine:

For example, when iceberg lettuce is imported to the UK from the USA by plane, 127 calories of energy (aviation fuel) are needed to transport 1 calorie of lettuce across the Atlantic. Similarly, 97 calories of transport energy are needed to import 1 calorie of asparagus by plane from Chile, and 66 units of energy are consumed when flying 1 unit of carrot energy from South Africa.

Back in pre-industrial days, according to the article, people were routinely getting 100 times as much energy out of food as they had put in. Now we are routinely getting back 1% of the energy we put in. We used to get 10,000 times more energy for the same input, in other words. How can we get by with such a terribly poor return? In two words: cheap oil.

But the US is in the process of losing oil supplies from two major oil producers: Mexico (our #2 oil source) and Venezuela (our #4 oil source). Mexico's oil exports will largely disappear in the next few years because their major offshore oil field, Cantarell, is "crashing"; its production may be declining by as much as 40% per year. (Cantarell is the second largest oil field in the world... or was.) Venezuela is gradually shifting its exports to China and India, partly in response to our coup attempt against Chavez a few years back (and it couldn't have helped when Rumsfeld compared Chavez to Hitler).

Meanwhile, the Saudis have promised production increases in recent years which they apparently could not carry out; they appear to be at maximum production capacity. They may in fact be past their peak (meaning they are past their peak rate of oil extraction). Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, also strongly believes that Iran is past its peak. Russia may have little oil left in several more years. As for Iraqi oil, it's mostly offline for the foreseeable future (or it gets smuggled), and the oil fields themselves could be damaged, such that a substantial amount of oil will never be recovered.

Without writing a book-length post, I'll say that I'm not enthusiastic, personally, about the alternative fuels. Burning used frying oil in your diesel car is a cool thing, I agree. Ethanol, on the other hand, is nothing but a hideous joke pushed by salivating agribusiness companies. Sure, if we starve the entire third world and destroy all topsoil between Ohio and Wyoming, we might be able to produce... 5% of our fuel needs! Woo-HOO!

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and The End of Suburbia, believes that society will "relocalize" in response to declining energy supplies. (Incidentally we are also past the peak production levels of natural gas.) Food will need to be grown locally in order to remain affordable. Schools will need to become smaller, school districts will reverse the ever-popular consolidations of previous years, and more kids will walk to school. Because travel will become prohibitively expensive, families will be less likely to spread out over the whole country. Mass commercial chain stores and chain restaurants will go out of business, since buying and selling goods locally will not provide the profit margins necessary to maintain their enormous overhead. Mom and Pop diners and shops will be far more prevalent. And backyard Victory Gardens will be a permanent fixture. Nobody will be able to afford ChemLawn or Scott's anymore (pesticides are petroleum-based), so backyard vegetables will be edible again.

Where I live right now, declining oil production is on virtually nobody's radar. I might as well stand by the road wearing a sandwich board reading "The End Is Nigh!!!" as bring up peak oil with my neighbors.

One way many people can relocalize all on their own is to grow some food, or at least to frequent roadside food stands and farmer's markets. I've never had the courage to stop at houses with signs out reading (say) "EGGS" but I should try it sometime. Local food is better anyway, in taste and nutrition both, because it's nowhere near as old. (Local food is also safer, as my mom writes about here.) I once forgot about a bag of green beans from my parents' garden for three weeks, yet when I discovered the beans crammed into the back of the crisper drawer, they looked considerably better and were firmer than supermarket beans. That was an eye-opener. And the first time I ate my parents' potatoes... well, frankly, if I didn't know in advance that they were potatoes, I would have thought they were were some sort of heretofore unknown tuber. I'd never experienced juice spurting out of a potato in my life, nor are potatoes normally that dense or colorful.

We actually have a whole acre of yard, and I am realizing that a tremendous amount of food can be grown on just a fraction of that acre. This is a quality of life issue even if we weren't staring peak oil and currency devaluation in the face. I was reading an article about blueberries that says you can get 10 to 25 pounds of blueberries per bush every year. I was astonished! They recommend planting an early-bearing, mid-bearing, and late-bearing variety so that you have blueberries all summer. Even with my total lack of a green thumb we're talking 30 pounds of (organic!) blueberries per summer. And if you want to freeze them, you pick them straight into a Ziploc, put it in the freezer, and then rinse them in warm water when you're ready to use them. Suddenly I feel like smacking my forehead for paying absurd amounts of money for supermarket berries (even in season, they ain't cheap, especially if they're organic).

My visions for our property far outstrip my actual gardening abilities and inclinations, I admit. (I don't like weeding and feel like a moron most of the time when faced with plant life.) But I am determined to make an effort this summer, at least getting a few fruit trees and a couple of hazelnut trees planted, growing some basil and cilantro and starting on my herbal medicines garden patch. (As far as herbs with medicinal uses, I am intending to grow St. John's Wort, hyssop, chamomile, lemon balm, and comfrey-- please leave other suggestions in the comments because this is a large raised bed in a sunny area and I'll need lots of plants to eventually fill it in!)

Now that I have spent a week with my nose inside books like "The Midwest Fruit and Vegetable Book" and "Landscaping with Edible Plants" I am starting to see all these 1-acre lawns in my neighborhood as an incredible waste. I am not saying everyone needs to do gardening, but NONE of my neighbors grow so much as a tomato plant in a patio pot. And there is a whole month in the spring when my husband can't go jogging because the chemical smell from lawn spraying is so strong, he and I have concluded it is probably bad for his health. For the effort these folks put into aerating, fertilizing, weed-spraying, rolling, mowing, and leaf-collecting their lawns, they could've had quite a nice harvest of berries, tomatoes, basil, and cukes.

I amuse myself wondering what the lawn-obsessed will be passionate about in 10 years. Ever more gigantic compost bins? Fancy grape arbors? Gourmet hops plants on 16-foot trellises and pricey homebrew equipment? Or, perhaps, the latest in solar-panel shingles and geothermal furnaces.

April 06, 2007

Well, I was panicking. Everyone else was happily buying Easter candy and eggs.

I've been reading about economics for around 2 years now, but lately I've been obsessed with it. This, I find, creates an unhealthy mindset while shopping.

I saw a rice mix I usually buy for $1.79 on sale for $2.79. Somewhere along the line it apparently doubled in price. This could indicate any or all of the following: 1) The fall in the dollar is now affecting imported food prices, 2) Rising fuel costs are resulting in higher prices, particularly for processed foods, 3) Inflation really is running at 6% per year, as claimed by John Williams of Shadow Stats. To me, it's not just one overpriced box of rice. If you read about the economic meltdown for a few days, a pricey box of rice becomes yet another small sign of the apocalypse.

Then there's the question: "How much of this stuff do people actually need to buy?" Our GDP is 70% consumer spending. I look at the tchotchke: sparkly pencils, cat toys, "crazy" straws, Pez dispensers, tiny $5 bottles of fancy hot sauce, holiday-specific socks, funky key chains, disposable toddler dishware, SpongeBob play-doh molds. We are entering a recession, and this time, unlike during the 2001 recession, consumers do not have home equity to cash out (nor much room on the credit cards) with which to continue spending. Cutesy plastic crap is going to disappear from the stores. Granted it's entirely made in China, but it's nonetheless part of our GDP because it's sold in the US. And although I would love to see Wal-Mart and the Oriental Trading Company go belly-up, these things have nasty ripple effects.

I also tend to panic at the grocery store because this is the one area where my husband and I are just not frugal. We don't deck the house with Pottery Barn, we don't go to Disneyworld, we buy our clothes at Target and similar. But we also buy beer and wine and grass-fed beef and organic go-gurts and not-from-concentrate juice in large jugs. I can drop $90 at Trader Joe's when I went in for three things. This is going to get less and less feasible due to inflation.

As an aside, I read a simple example the other day which explained how an increasing money supply causes higher prices (i.e. inflation):

Let's assume a country "Omniland" where there are exactly 100 widgets
and nothing else. Let's also assume that there are 100 "spendios",
which is their currency. Each widget is priced at 1 spendio (S$1.00).

Now if somehow an additional S$50.00 are put into Omniland, then there
would be a total of S$150.00, but still only 100 widgets. So every
widget is now priced at S$1.50. I would call this inflation.

Another way to say it is, if there are suddenly more dollars chasing the same amount of stuff, prices go up because prices are whatever the market will bear. But, importantly, this does not happen instantaneously. Inflation starts with money creation and only gradually winds up in prices. Bankers have been throwing around brand new money like so much confetti for years now, and eventually that raises prices, thereby robbing the average person by devaluing the dollars in their wallet. "A penny here, a penny there, and inflation makes you poorer," I read somewhere. Since the M3 is increasing at 11% per year and inflation is only at 6% per year, I'm guessing there's inflation still in the pipeline.

Inflation means my kids will have to cut down on orange juice, I will have to give up finocciono salami, and my husband will have to quit buying that hideously aromatic French cheese. (Seriously, I'm no picky eater, I even eat gorgonzola and Stilton, but this stuff is on another plane altogether.) Since I am not yet forced to cut back on food expenses, I just push my cart around while berating myself for lack of discipline.

Lastly, I mentally play the survivalist game while going down the aisles. A huge bag of rice for $3... combined with the huge bag of lentils I can get at the Indian store for a similar amount, we could conceivably eat for a week on $6, particularly if supplemented by vegetables grown in the backyard and fruit from our apple and pear tree. From there I'm on to another thought: I've got to get in on the raw milk thing, because that's local and probably they'll have to say no to new customers soon-- we need to be sure we're grandfathered in. Oh-- and where was that place again where I can buy the 50-pound sacks of wheat berries?

No, I am not convinced things would ever be quite that dire. But nervousness about the economy makes me attempt to mentally prepare, because in some ways, that makes me feel more in control and less anxious. On the other hand, "mentally preparing" causes me to grocery shop with an eye twitch.

[Regarding the economy, there is a great batch of quotes from March here, which I highly recommend. For those who aren't familiar with the terms, neither was I when I started, but plow ahead and it begins making sense after a few days/weeks of checking the news stories.]